


Bane of the Doctor - Part 3: The Recipe of Fear

by RodimusDoctor



Series: Bane of the Doctor [4]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Crossover, Fear, Gen, Multiple Doctors (Doctor Who)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-17 08:56:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1381552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RodimusDoctor/pseuds/RodimusDoctor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dirge Manson, adopted son of 'Colonel Runaway', continues to torture the 10th Doctor, and a major weapon in his arsenal is revealed. The Doctor manages some cleverness of his own, but has he got what it takes to endure the fear that is to come?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bane of the Doctor - Part 3: The Recipe of Fear

I like to watch him. I see him crawling around, arms outstretched, trying to make some sense out of the world I’ve put him in. He craves information; with information, he can plan.

I won’t let him plan.

I do let him wander about on his hands and knees, and so does the hired help I’ve put in there with him. They circle him like sharks, like predators, eager for me to give the word so they can hurt him some more.

There aren’t quite so many opportunities for correction any more. The Doctor has learned to avoid punishment, and with it he cultivates hope. I allow his wanderings for the same reason; let him believe he is gathering information that will, at some point, prove useful. He cannot learn the true dimensions of his prison no matter how far he crawls. He is clever – he will work that out eventually. Hope is such a wonderful thing to crush.

I’m sure the Doctor has already figured out the second prison he’s helping me build in his mind. Every time he addresses me, every time he says, ‘please sir,’ he adds another brick to that wall.

“Doctor,” I say, speaking into the microphone on the panel before me, “I don’t believe you are getting enough exercise. What do you think?”

“Please, sir, I’m as fit as I’ve ever been,” he replies.

“That’s not what my instruments are telling me,” I lie. I could pull up a complete report of the Doctor’s physical health and have it at my fingertips in moments, but it’s not really necessary.

“You’ve become lethargic in your time here, Doctor. Normally you’d be running from some monster or another. Very good for your hearts. And your continued survival.”

“Please sir, it’s not as if running about in here is a good idea, is it?” the Doctor tells me. “Please sir, I might run into a wall, or a control panel, or one of the engines, or even an airlock. Please sir what are they, a silent drive?”

I mute the microphone so he can’t hear me chuckle. He’s good. I almost want to respond to his queries, give him the information he is trying to trick me into divulging. A lesser man would have fallen for it.

“Jumping jacks, Doctor,” I tell him. “Those will pose no danger to you or your surroundings.”

“Please sir, I’d really rather not,” the Doctor says, and I hit a button that sends a signal to the hired help, the best ogron thugs money can buy. The signal instructs one of them to administer unto the Doctor a mild correction. “Honestly, please sir, I’m fine. You know, I... owff!” A kick to the stomach, rather a lot harder than what I had in mind. I shall have to speak to them about that, especially if the Doctor is incapacitated...

“All right, all right! Please, sir!” the Doctor says. “I’m jumping.” And he is. Not terribly enthusiastic, but obedient.

“Let’s say an even two thousand,” I say. “That should get you back in shape.” I switch off the microphone and leave him to it. He’ll be kept busy, and I have the next stage of his treatment to prepare.

 

He was a true genius, but few recognized it because he was also a homicidal maniac. A doctor in his own right, and a gifted chemist, he committed many crimes during the late twentieth and early twenty-first century by harnessing the power of fear. No one would ever follow in his work, for which the universe is no doubt better off.

He was not at all hard to find. In-between crime sprees, he spent many months and sometimes years locked up in the local asylum. Convincing him to come with me was just as easy. I didn’t even need to entice him with riches. Well, not riches by my standards, anyway.

I enter the laboratory, which I prepared especially for him. I find him hard at work. I also find he has managed to recreate his costume from the clothes of his test subjects. Everyone needs their own little affectations, I suppose. Just look at the outfits the Doctor has worn during his many incarnations! Especially the sixth. But at least he never pretended to be a scarecrow.

“Doctor Crane,” I command, “it is time. Are you ready?”

“I have been waiting for you, Dirge Manson.”

I raise an eyebrow, but otherwise manage to contain my surprise. I did not tell him my name, and he has had no contact with the hired help. As far as I know, I mentally amend; I must be careful not to underestimate this man. Setting him loose on the universe with today’s technology scarcely bears thinking about.

“Show me,” I command, and he leads me over to a row of seven gas chambers. The first three contain the corpses from three different races. The remaining four still contain live subjects, although the first two hold test subjects who are hopelessly insane with terror. Of the remaining two chambers, one holds seven sentient life forms including a judoon, an atraxi, a sycorax, two raxacoricofallapatorians, a sontaran, and a human. There were two humans in there to begin with, but the judoon impaled him in a moment of panic. The survivors are all on their last legs; after today’s testing they will no doubt be insane like the rest.

Doctor Crane wastes no time on gloating or taunting; he’s got that out of his system by now. The occupants of the chamber beat on the glass and plead for mercy, or so I imagine; the glass partition is soundproof. Doctor Crane inserts the vial of his latest fear gas and pumps it into the chamber. The effect is nearly instantaneous; the subjects react with terror to unseen demons, chimeras of their minds pulled forth from the darkness around their souls.

...chimeras of their minds. I’m writing that one down.

“Very impressive,” I say, “but nothing I haven’t seen before. Will it work on him?”

“To a near-immortal, with hundreds of years of experiences to draw from?” Doctor Crane replies with a smile even I find unsettling. “Yes, it will work. And I can synthesize variations to trigger different fears, so no one experience will be the same for him. I have had most promising results with subject seven...”

I turn and look into the last cell. The occupant represents one of my greatest risks in this project; Time Lords are capable of sensing the existence of one another. I don’t think that will be a problem in this case; the Doctor has, after all, frequently crossed his own timeline during his travels. Who is to say this isn’t one of those times?

I step up close to the glass and stare at the humble little man sitting on the floor in the corner, hugging his knees. So pitiful, so weak. And yet, when he turns his head and catches my eyes with his, I see there is still plenty of strength. He is far from broken, but he’s not the Doctor I intend to break.

“Show me,” I say, and Doctor Crane pumps his fear gas into the chamber. Inside, the seventh Doctor suffers.

“I’m curious, Dirge Manson.”

I turn to Doctor Crane, annoyed once more with his familiarity with me. I can see in his smirk that he is aware of this, and it amuses him.

“Have a care, Scarecrow,” I say, pronouncing his self-imposed title with as much disdain as I can muster. “Though your work speaks for itself, there are plenty of other chemical specialists in the time stream for me to choose from who will show me the proper respect.”

If he feels threatened by this, he does not show it.

“You have a future incarnation of this one in your main playroom,” Crane goes on. “Why bother with the other one? Why not have your fun with this man here,” he indicates the chamber, “now that you know the gas works? Or, alternatively, why did you not test my gas on the other one you...”

“When I put him back into the time-stream,” I rap on the chamber window, “he will have no memory of having been here. Neither will the other one, save for the instructions I shall give him. It is important that this man, the Doctor, come into my ‘playroom’, as you call it, with no pre-conceived notions of what he will face.”

“I see,” Doctor Crane says.

I turn to leave, but at the door I look back.

“And I am not ‘having my fun’ with him,” I tell Doctor Crane. “This is about more than you can understand.”

“If you say so, Dirge Manson,” he replies, not even bothering to look at me.

I leave, and entertain some very amusing punishments to inflict upon him. He is arrogant and disrespectful, and the latitude I have granted him is all but used up. Still, I did choose to ally myself with a brilliant lunatic. I have only myself to blame.

 

The Doctor is still doing jumping jacks when I get back. Not surprising; I doubt I could do two thousand jumping jacks any faster.

That doesn’t mean I have to be fair about it.

“Time’s up, Doctor!” I say as I re-establish contact. “I’m afraid that’s going to cost you.”

“What?” he replies. “Please, sir, you never said anything about... oof!”

I’d given the signal for a moderate beating. No bones broken, just enough to put him on the floor for a while. It was time to relieve the current floor wardens anyway; the next shift is arriving soon, and ogrons can be inconveniently grumpy if they feel they’ve been overworked.

And, I could do with a couple hours’ sleep before I begin the next stage of the process.

“Next time you’ll have to do better, Doctor,” I say when the floor wardens have finished. I remember my physical education instructor saying more or less the same thing to me many times. He’d be astonished if he could see me now. If I hadn’t killed him.

I break communication once more, walk five feet to my cot and lie down. I make a mental note to wake myself in two hours, then I close my eyes and sleep instantly.

 

I’m awake and moving exactly when the two hours are up. If it is one thing my father taught me, it was discipline. Him, and all my instructors at both the Headless Monks’ Delirium Monastery and the Papal Mainframe’s Holy Academy of Military Action. No special schools for me, not like my sister. I was not expected to succeed.

I make my breakfast and settle in to read the updates from my hired help. Doctor Crane has synthesized enough fear gas for my purposes, and he catalogued all the effects of that gas on the test subjects, including the seventh Doctor. As expected, most subjects have been rendered insane, and a couple have been killed. It seems the judoon bludgeoned one of the raxacoricofallapatorians, only to be sliced in half by the other. No great loss. They are all going to die, anyway. I’ll take care of that as soon as I’ve dropped the seventh Doctor back where I snatched him from.

The report from my floor wardens proves more enlightening. Their writing style is terrible – you hire ogrons for their brawn, not their brains – but I am well used to it now. The Doctor did his instructed jumping jacks, and...

I look closer. I told the ogrons to report anything strange, and in that they did not disappoint. It seems the Doctor pinched himself repeatedly all over his head. Why would he do that? No doubt there was a purpose the floor wardens did not see...

Then he picked and scratched, always in the same two places. Just below his ear, and above his jaw. Two places that have no significance to his face and head...

...but on the mask, it is a different story. The transmitter and receiver, allowing my communication with him. He has found them, and I have no doubt whatsoever what he has used them for. Only a technical genius with the steadiest of hands could rewire such tiny devices to broadcast a signal out of this facility.

The Doctor is one such man.

For a moment, I’m impressed. I smile at his resourcefulness and ingenuity under such dire circumstances. Then the full implications of such an act hit me, and I spring to work. I broadcast a jamming signal and cut off all communication to and from this facility. Then I look down at the Doctor, zooming in on his prone form on the floor. He lies in the same position the hired help left him in last night, but both his hands are fiddling with his mask. Sending his signal.

What’s done is done. I can’t help that. What I can do is put a stop to it, then try to ascertain the nature of his broadcast, where he sent it, and if it can be traced back here.

And then, the Doctor will be punished. He has given himself hope. That must be taken away and replaced with something worse.

 

The Doctor lay on the floor, breathing raggedly. Definitely a couple of broken ribs. And his nose again. Nevertheless, he was feeling clever. Under his mask, next to a pool of dried blood from his face, his little transmitter was doing its job. He doubted his signal would broadcast for very long, but he knew it would reach its intended target.

After all, he remembered receiving it.

Rough hands grabbed him and beat him some more. So they’ve found out, the Doctor thought. No doubt his captor would be admonishing him for his actions right now, if he hadn’t disabled and rewired the tiny receiver. Please sir, the Doctor thought, I’m just too clever for you! He would have smiled, but the beating got worse and soon all there was in his mind was the pain.

When unconsciousness claimed him, he welcomed it.

 

The Doctor awoke with a headache, but was otherwise all right. He could feel the healing cream all over him once more, and it had clearly done its job.

Nevertheless, something nagged at him. He felt uneasy. Hardly surprising, given his current predicament, but... it wasn’t that. Not exactly...

A strong force grabbed and pulled on him, like the vacuum of space through a breached hull. Instinctively he reached out and grabbed...

...the magnetic clamp he’d locked in place above the vortex lever. Daleks and Cybermen flew past him into the portal to the void on the top floor of the Torchwood 1 tower on Canary Wharf. And through the stream of robotic evil he could see...

“Rose!” the Doctor cried, watching as his companion clung to her lever like her life depended on it.

Because it did; her grip was slipping. The Doctor reached out for her but the room was too wide.

The last of the Daleks and Cybermen vanished into the void. Rose tried to hold on, but her fingers simply couldn’t last against the void’s deadly pull. With cruel inevitability her fingers were stretched straight, and with a final scream Rose Tyler fell backwards toward the empty realm between dimensions. The Doctor screamed... and threw himself after her. The void meant death but he didn’t care – he was not losing Rose again.

They passed through the event horizon into the white nothingness. The Doctor took one final breath from the air that had come in with him, and willed himself to move faster. Rose was just ahead, reaching out for him...

There were thousands of Daleks and Cybermen in the Void with them. All of them turned and fired on Rose. The Doctor’s eyes widened as he saw the death rays converging...

Rose screamed and convulsed in agony, and disintegrated. The Doctor screamed her name as he flew through the red mist that had once been the woman he loved...

He landed on the floor. Why there was a floor in the Void, he neither knew nor cared. She was gone. All around him, Daleks and Cybermen chanted their killwords. Exterminate! Delete! The Doctor curled himself into a ball and cried, waiting for the killing shot to come.

“Doctor?”

He looked up. The Daleks and Cybermen were gone, and he was in a very familiar house. An old man and a middle-aged woman sat on a couch in front of him, but the voice – also familiar – had come from behind.

“Doctor!” the middle-aged woman snapped. “You mustn’t be here!”

“You said if she ever saw you again, it would kill her!” said the old man, with eyes that were sad bud fierce. Wilfred Mott. And Sylvia Noble on the couch next to him. Which meant...

The Doctor spun around. Donna Noble. Clutching her head.

“I’m remembering!” she screamed.

“No!” the Doctor was on his feet, arms outstretched, reaching for her...

“You stay away!” Sylvia slammed into the Doctor’s back and forced him to the floor.

“I’m trying to save her!” he cried.

“Haven’t you done enough?” Mrs. Noble snapped, pressing her knee into the Doctor’s spine while locking an arm around his neck.

Donna fell to her knees, screaming, her palms pressed to her temples as if to keep her brain matter in.

“Are you really going to just let her die?” Wilfred asked, squatting at the Doctor’s side. “Didn’t you promise she’d be safe?”

“Get off me!” the Doctor shouted frantically, reaching desperately toward his friend. “Donna!”

Blood leaked from Donna’s nose and ears. She let off one last scream and stopped, her arms falling to her sides like rope, her eyes empty and lifeless.

“Noooo!” the Doctor cried as she pitched forward, her head falling like a wrecking ball toward him...

“Ow!” he said. He’d been struck on the forehead by...

...a mirror? No, a compact, with makeup and a small round mirror in it.

“That is not your DNA,” said the young blonde girl who’d thrown it. The youngest of the Family of Blood. The other three stood behind her, holding Martha, Tim Latimer and Joan Redfern by the arms. Surrounding all of them were hundreds of other scarecrows.

“Not a very convincing trick,” said the son, the smug bastard.

“I don’t think he really values the lives of these people,” said the mother.

The father said nothing. He merely snapped his fingers.

And a scarecrow stepped up to Martha, reached forward and snapped her neck.

“No!” the Doctor screamed, watching helplessly as his companion’s lifeless body fell to the floor. Another scarecrow gripped Tim’s head; the Doctor tried to rise and help the young boy, but something held him in place. Tim’s eyes widened and he began to scream, and the scarecrow gave his head a brutal twist. His body joined Martha’s on the floor.

Father Blood himself gripped Joan’s head in his hands; Joan fought to stay strong, but the Doctor knew she was terrified.

“Wait!” he shouted. “You can have my regenerations, my DNA, whatever you want. Just leave her alone.”

“We’re going to take what we want from you anyway, Doctor,” Mother Blood told him, and she nodded at her husband. He smiled with malevolent glee and began twisting Joan’s neck, slowly. She fought against him, her teeth clenched and neck muscles straining, but that only encouraged him.

The Doctor renewed his struggles, desperation lending him strength, but it was not enough. Joan’s head turned inexorably to the left, maintaining eye contact with the Doctor. He saw her strength fade and her hope collapse as pain joined fear when her vertebrae reached their maximum tolerance. She moaned through her teeth at the first crack of bone. Then Father Blood gave her head a final sharp twist; there was a wet crunch, and Joan’s eyes became as empty as the Void.

The Doctor screamed in agony and rage. Oh, how he would punish them! He would teach them punishment’s true meaning, show them justice devoid of mercy the way only a Time Lord could. Each would receive a unique sentence; they wanted to live forever, so he would make sure that they did.

...except, he had. The Doctor closed his eyes and forced his brain into action, and he remembered the true series of events. He’d punished the Family of Blood, left Joan and taken Martha with him, seen Tim in his old age being honoured for his wartime service. Rose had also survived, and Donna had been alive and well when he’d left her.

This wasn’t real.

The Doctor breathed deeply and cleared his mind. When he opened his eyes again there was only darkness, silence, and the familiar feel of the synthetic suit. It had been an illusion brought on by fear. Nothing more.

“Please, sir,” he said, “you’ll have to do better than that.”

No response came. Satisfied with himself, the Doctor sat and waited for the inevitable next attempt.

 

“Of course he realized what it was,” Doctor Crane replied after I demanded he explain his gas’s failure. “And yes, he is now forewarned as to what to expect.”

“So you admit you have failed,” I snap.

“I am saying,” Doctor Crane continues, “that it doesn’t matter. I had the same results with the Doctor’s seventh incarnation, and look at him now.”

I look. Inside his cell, the Doctor writhes and screams from underneath his cot.

“He figured out what I was doing to him, as well,” Crane says. “He knew what would occur every time I pumped the gas into his cell. Yet look at him. He still suffers from the last gassing, which I administered upon your last visit.”

That gave me pause. It had been several hours since then. Time enough to heal the other Doctor’s new injuries while fixing the transmitter in his sensory deprivation suit.

“The gas will wear off in a few hours more,” Crane tells me, “and he shall be all ready for reinsertion into the timestream, as requested.”

“And the other Doctor?” I ask.

“You are going to be taking him a lot further,” Crane tells me, and he picks up one of his many coloured vials. “Each of these is stronger than the last. His every attempt to adapt will be countered and defeated. Eventually, he won’t be able to distinguish from fantasy and reality. Such is the power of fear.”

“Very well,” I say. “Let me know the moment this Doctor recovers.”

I leave Doctor Crane and return to my observation booth. I have to trust that his gas will do as he claims. If he doesn’t deliver, I will have wasted a considerable amount of time and be no closer to achieving my objective.

I take a moment and think of my father, left behind with the unpleasant duty of explaining our plans to Madame Kovarian. I am almost certain her reaction will be negative, and thus my father will take the brunt of her ire. Such a fate as she’d devise, I would not wish on many, least of all the man who raised me from incubator to adulthood. When I succeed, I shall intervene and save him, and see to it that he takes Madame Kovarian’s place.

I look down at the Doctor far below, no doubt still feeling smug after freeing himself from the illusions the gas had conjured in his mind. I have some plans in mind to keep him busy and humiliated until the next round of the operation. I have no intention of letting him feel such triumph again.

“We’ve barely begun with you, Doctor,” I say. “By the end, you will be broken. And then you will be ready.”

**Author's Note:**

> Dirge Manson needed the use of a fear-inducing gas, so it seemed only natural to include the Scarecrow (Doctor Crane) from the Batman (DC) universe. I figured, why not? With time-travel, and a little bit of universe crossover, having Dirge Manson poach the Scarecrow from Gotham City for his mission not only made sense, but it also seemed kind of cool. This is fanfic, so there really is nothing stopping me from putting any character from anything into this. Will Batman turn up later in the story? Probably not. Well, maybe a future version of him, if it works for the story. For now, though, the Scarecrow is simply one of Dirge Manson's cronies. For now.


End file.
